It takes a real estate agent, on average, nine and a half months to sell a house, while the buyer manages to get an average discount of 16% compared to the initial asking price. To photograph the state of the Italian real estate market is a report drawn up by Bank of Italy, interviewing professionals in the sector.
A photograph, that of Bank of Italy, of a market tinged with a certain pessimism about future scenarios. A pessimism rooted in the data relating to the third quarter of 2014, in which the balance between the shares of operators reporting a price increase and those reporting a decrease in selling prices remains stable overall (to -65,3%, from - 66,4% of the July survey).
Assessments on demand conditions worsen: the balance between agents reporting an increase and those indicating a decrease in potential buyers widened slightly to -22,7 percentage points from -20,5 in the previous survey.
The share of purchases financed with a mortgage loan also fell (to 59,9%, from 62,9% in the previous survey), interrupting the gradual increase underway for about a year.
The level of pessimism of operators on the short-term trends of their reference market remains high, but declining: the negative balance between indications of improvement and worsening in the current quarter was equal to -20,4 percentage points, from -26,9 from the previous survey.
The balance on expectations on new assignments to sell increased again (to 16), as did the share of operators who anticipate a decrease in prices (to 61,2 per cent, from 55,8).
Finally, as regards the prospects of the domestic market, the negative balance of assessments on the short-term prospects in the domestic market remained substantially stable (-33,7).
